On-call rates

Comparison of various on-call rates

Software / IT / SRE: $100 to $500 per week for standby, plus normal hourly equivalent to 1.5× pay when called in, often with a 1 to 2 hour minimum.

Senior SRE / critical infrastructure: $300 to $1,000+ per week for standby, plus roughly 1.5× to 2× effective hourly pay for active incidents.

HVAC / electricians / plumbers: $25 to $100 per day or $100 to $400 per week for standby, plus roughly 1.5× hourly pay when called out, commonly with a 2 to 4 hour minimum.

Utilities / linemen: standby stipend or contractual premium, with overtime or double-time commonly applying when actually called in.

Nurses / medical staff: often a few dollars to $10+ per hour while on call, with full hourly pay, overtime, or callback minimums when activated.

Physicians / specialists: commonly hundreds to thousands of dollars per 24-hour call period depending on specialty, scarcity, and workload.

Fire / EMS: standby rules vary by department, but overtime and callback minimums are common.

Law enforcement: standby and callback rules vary, with overtime or callback minimums often used.

Industrial / manufacturing maintenance: roughly $20 to $75 per day or a weekly standby stipend, plus overtime when called in, often with minimum paid callback hours.

Executives / senior management: on-call availability is often treated as part of salary rather than separately compensated.

Light-duty software on-call: roughly $150 to $250 per week plus pay for active incidents.

Moderately restrictive software on-call: roughly $300 to $500 per week plus 1.5× equivalent hourly pay for incidents, with at least a 1-hour minimum.

Heavy or production-critical software on-call: roughly $500 to $1,000 per week plus 1.5× to 2× equivalent hourly pay for incidents, with a 2-hour minimum.

Weekend-only availability: roughly $150 to $300 per day for being available, plus separate compensation for actual work performed.

Highly restrictive ongoing availability: roughly a 10% to 25% salary premium can be reasonable when the employee must remain continuously reachable, stay near a computer, respond quickly, avoid travel, or regularly handle nights and weekends.

At $70,000 per year, the straight-time equivalent is about $33.65 per hour.

One possible software on-call structure would be $400 per week while assigned on-call, plus $50 per hour for actual incidents, with a 2-hour minimum for every incident.

Planned weekend work should generally be treated separately from on-call work. If management already knows in advance that employees are expected to work Saturday or Sunday to meet a deadline, that is scheduled additional work rather than unpredictable emergency availability.

On-call should ideally be reserved for genuinely unpredictable production incidents, outages, security problems, critical client issues, or other emergencies.